Unconscious Mate Selection

Mate Selection

Mate Selection is a very important part of people's lives, and is studied on Psychological, Sociological and Anthropological levels. Mate Selection is important in most cultures and many of them believe that it is a key in becoming an adult. Some cultures think it is too important to leave the choice to their children and arrange marriages; while others believe it is something that should be chosen of free will. I will be focusing on free marriage, where the person in question is able to choose and be chosen by their own mate.

Mate selection is important to our lives because it affects many things that we do in life. It also effects how we produce offspring because many cultures believe that it is not appropriate to have children until you have found and married a life mate. Mate Selection is something many people think they have complete control over; however I believe that it is a heavily subconscious choice.

Studying Frued's Theory on mate selection, the Oedipus (for males and Electra for females) Complex, a more Darwin-esc look on mate selection, being the Evolutionary Psychology Theory, and Social Exchange Theory I will try to prove that it is a decision made in the unconscious mind.

Oedipus and Electra Complex

Freud, one of the most famous psychologists developed a theory about unconscious mate selection, with the same style as he developed all of his theories. He believed that we all have something called the Oedipus (if you are male) and Electra (if you are female) Complex. The names Oedipus and Electra come from Greek mythology.

Electra was a Greek Goddess, the daughter of Agamemnon. She ends up helping her brother kill her traitorous mother. The reason for this is because her mother cheated on her father and then plotted and executed a plan to kill Electra's father. Oedipus comes from the Greek story about a Greek God who is prophesied to kill his father and marry his mother, so he ends up killing his father and marrying his mother.

The Oedipus and Electra Complex Theory says that your first love is your parent of the opposite sex. Children secretly long to be with their opposite sex parent sexually and become very fearful of their same sex parent. Boys become afraid that their fathers will find out that they are in love with their mother and try to cut their penis off, while girls are angry at their mothers for cutting off their penis at birth. Also this fear and anger is joined by extreme envy because they have won over the opposite sex parent. Eventually however this anger, fear and jealousy cools and the child realizes that their same sex parent has won their father or mother fair and square and begins to seek out someone like their opposite sex parent in hopes of forming an intimate relationship and fixing the problems and issues of their childhood with their new partner.

Both, the movie by Mel Gibson, and the play "Hamlet" show varying degrees of this complex when the character Hamlet has not moved on from his mother and attempted to find another mate. In the movie, Hamlet goes so far as to proceed with what may be intercourse with his mother on her bed after a flourish of heated kisses.

This theory, like many of his other theories is heavily under critique and is not very widely accepted among psychologists. However, again, like many of his other theories, it has been adapted again and again into completely new theories.

One such theory is the Sexual Imprinting Theory. This theory says that you look at the role models and adults around you and pick out the traits that you see as important and desirable and note the traits that you despise and find very undesirable.

These traits don't have to come from your mother or father, but instead can come from close family friends, uncles and aunts, and basically any adult that you have close contact with. Also they may not all be physical or mental traits. You then use this mixture of traits that are wanted and unwanted, fit them together to create your perfect mate, sub-consciously; then look for a person that fits into your image of a perfect mate or as close as you can find.

Social Exchange Theory

The Social Exchange Theory of unconscious mate selection is much like the ordinary Social Exchange theory and is almost intuitive in its meaning. The Social Exchange theory says that you look for someone that will compliment you. We look for someone with traits opposite to ours in order to make up for our faults and complete us. When a person finds their mate who has strengths and weaknesses that complement their own it will make life easier for this individual.

Finding someone to complement you will help to ensure a healthy relationship and children. In other words if someone is a submissive or quiet person they will look for a loud or dominant person to balance things out in the relationship or to stand up for them and protect them. By balancing things out you are better able to survive in the social system that we have created because your partner covers the areas of expertise that you are not able to and vice versa. This theory also states that people will look for someone with similar interests, and values as themselves. This helps to keep them interested in the other person but also helps to prevent fights in the relationship, limit the total of times that they will need to come to a compromise and the amount they will have to give up in such a compromise. A person will also look for physical things, like if you aren't very strong you will look for a stronger mate so that there is someone to protect you and the children. If you are not able to provide food and money for your children you will look for a mate who will be able to provide for them.

Another branch of this theory states that when looking for a mate you look for one with strengths as strong as your strengths. This helps ensure that there is a fair exchange of strengths. One example of this would be a wealthy man looking for a beautiful wife. If one partner has a strong strength and the other does not they might begin to feel useless, or unimportant. They might even start to take advantage of the person with the strength. Another example of this might be how a male might look for a younger female because they are more submissive, while a female might look for an older male because they are more mature.

Another one of the exchanges that some would say takes place is sex for other resources such as love, respect and other things of value. Since women have taken charge and claimed the right to exchange sex for other thing, it explains why men are always seeking to gain it. It also explains why women are not so eager to give it, because it